Earned a master's degree at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. with degrees in English and Communications. Graduated from Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Ore. He grew up, in order, in California, Arkansas, Kentucky and Oregon.
He regularly covers the Oscars and the Emmys, goes to Comic-Con and Coachella, reviews pop music, and conducts interviews with authors and actors, musicians and directors, a little of this and a whole lot of that. Peter Larsen has been the Pop Culture Reporter for the Orange County Register since 2004, finally achieving the neat trick of getting paid to report and write about the stuff he's obsessed about pretty much all his life. “It’s been an incredible show for me.”Ĭheck out new “Phineas and Ferb” songs - including one written and performed by guitar legend Slash - when “Phineas and Ferb: Across the Second Dimension” premieres on Disney Channel at 8 p.m. “Nothing would make me happier than to be working on ‘Phineas and Ferb’ for the next decade,” Jacob says. “The magic that happened when I met Dan and Swampy, they gave me two songs in demo form, ‘Gitchy Gitchy Goo’ and “The Theme to Perry the Platypus,’ and I think those songs sealed the deal for me.”Īnd he’s happy to keep working on the show as long as it’s around. And also the other composers I’ve been inspired by, Hans Zimmer, John Powell, Harry Gregson-Williams, I was fortunate enough to be able to see how they worked, and that sparked me to get more versatile, too.”Īsked whether he had a favorite “Phineas and Ferb” song, Jacob said he really couldn’t pick just one. “I like to think my being a guitar player, as a composer allows me to to look at other instruments from a guitar player’s standpoint.
session musician forces you to learn lots of different styles of music,” Jacob says. The show is also fun - for Jacob as for fans - for its genre-hopping tunes, with everything from power pop and hip-hop to country and show tunes popping up from episode to episode.
If I do something like a wailing guitar, they’ll use that (visually). “I think what makes the songs work so well is that we always do them before going to picture. He’d been working for Disney animation for a few years when he was introduced to Povenmire and Marsh as a guy who might be able to handle the heavy music load - at least two songs each episode - they wanted to include in their series.
Jacob’s professional career includes stints in top 40 cover bands as a teenager, work as a guitarist for such stars as Bette Midler, Ray Charles and George Michael, and eventually, a successful career as a film and TV composer. Read our interview with Povenmire and Marsh here. “I could hear how great those songs were with just an acoustic guitar and an out-of-tune vocal.” “But I love those days,” says Jacob, who’s arranged and produced maybe 300 songs for the Disney Channel animated series, and co-written quite a few, too. And then they finally discovered the world of MP3s. “We love to joke about it,” says Jacob of the working relationship he and Dan Povenmire and Jeff “Swampy” Marsh had then. In the old days, Danny Jacob would check his answering machine on a Friday night, find a very rough demo of a song from the creators of “Phineas and Ferb,” and by Monday would be ready to deliver to them a polished number. Meet the man behind the music on 'Phineas and Ferb' – Orange County Register Close Menu